


Dueling With Pride

by kindcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Be warned kaiba digs into himself pretty hard, Internalized Homophobia, gay kaiba, lesbian mai, so if homophobia triggers you you might want to skip out on this one!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindcolors/pseuds/kindcolors
Summary: Coming out is a big step for anyone. When a repressed Kaiba finds Mai’s LGBT support blog, will be decide to confront himself?





	Dueling With Pride

**Author's Note:**

> Big Internalized Homophobia warning!! Take caution.

Honestly, the blog started as a hobby. Mai Valentine, as the only openly gay person in the professional dueling circuit as of current, tried her best to be open and giving to her community. She found herself hoarding less and less and giving more and more to LGBT charities and help groups. She knew she was the only voice that dueling youth might have had. As long as she had a platform, she’d use it to spread positivity for those less fortunate than her.

Mai’s blog was really a simple creature. It was an LGBT centric site, where Mai found a safe place to ramble about her dating life and give free advice to anyone who wandered over to her corner of the web. When she opened an anonymous ask function— for anyone seeking specific advice or support— that was when her blog really went off. Besides random hate and bigotry that would be spat her way (her page was no place for any of that!), at least fifteen people a day messaged her under clever or safe pen names, opening Mai up to a new instinct of protection and concern. She guessed she had always been a bit of a softie, but hearing kids come to her with their most intimate problems were truly-opening.

Mai’s absolute favorite messages were ones from previous askers, updates to their ventures and newly found confidence flowing from their screens onto hers. One she found messaged her exceedingly was a user under the pseudonym ‘Adeena Yagami’. It seemed every few hours for the past work week they shot Mai an ask, and god did Mai feel bad for that kid. If she knew them personally she’d crush them in a hug. It was obvious they were young and new to the community. Mai imaged a fourteen-year-old kid sneaking into their parents’ computer room to ask questions they felt were dirty but most certainly were not in any way, shape, or form.

They typed exceedingly well for a fourteen-year-old, though.

  
**********

Seto Kaiba rubbed his eyes as he booted down his computer, giving both himself and the screen a break. His hand instinctively flinched over to his alarm clock— 3:28 AM. God, he had been overworking himself lately. To distract himself, he acknowledged, but still. There were plenty of other ways of doing that, all of which Kaiba wouldn’t even bother to ponder. Most too simple or too taxing on the brain. Most of his work came easily to him, but still held a strong grip on him to keep him engaged.

All he wished was that he’d let himself use paper more often.

Kaiba sighed.

His mind wandered back to what it had been meaning to repress— Boys.

Not boys like himself, or his brother.

A special subset of boys.

Attractive boys.

It made Kaiba sicken himself.

He scratched up and down his arm at the thought of anyone finding out these… ideas. People would be disgusted also, he bet. No one associated themselves with people like that, not in the business world.

Christ, what a rumor like that would do to his company. Not a single man would touch Kaiba Corp, not at the suggestion that Kaiba would touch them. People like that weren’t respected. Or loved. He’d seen it first hand, how Gorzaburo would treat employees that were like that, verbally degrading them and basically securing that they wouldn’t ever be employed again. Now that people knew they were like that now.

And he had heard how people at school talked— (Kaiba couldn’t believe he was stopping himself to that level, but this felt so much bigger than him. So, so much bigger.) people would shoot him glares down the hall, move away from him in class, avoid him like he was contagious with something. (Which he wanted but under different circumstances. He never wanted these circumstances.)

He wondered if his brother would still love him. If he knew about Kaiba’s thoughts.

How Yūgi would feel if he knew.

How anyone would feel.   
Kaiba had convinced himself he didn’t care, that he was indifferent to everyone, why was it getting to him? How did any of this happen?

How? How? Why? The heart wants what it wants, Kaiba guessed, but why had it wanted something wrong? Something bad?

He pondered how he let this get so bad. He should have done something to stop himself the minute he couldn’t force himself to be attracted to women. They had therapies, he knew. Was he too far gone for that now? How did they deem that?

Kaiba wiped his face as he reopened his laptop, throwing the covers off of himself. Christ, why was it so hot in his room, you could have sworn he was burning in hell before he even got there. He didn’t even believe in hell, so why did it scare him?

Oh. Maybe because the mass of society believes in it. And he was constantly being forced under societal pressures that he needed to uphold for his own sake.

He needed to find a cure for whatever he had. He fumbled as he put his password in and pulled up his browser. He typed ‘gay bad’ into the search bar, both words causing him to scratch at his own arms before hitting ‘enter’.

One of the first results was from a website called ‘https://www.duelingwithpride.com/‘. He clicked it. It was a morbid curiosity that led him to it. It wasn’t helping his efforts to get rid of those ideas at all, if anything, they were only amplifying a sin, he should stop while he was ahead and get back to the task at hand—

He started reading.

‘[05/12] When I was around 15, I thought being gay was bad and wrong. Then, I kissed a woman and everything felt worse for some reason. I believe it was because I hadn’t let myself be happy. So, I’m going to tell all of you the same thing I told myself:   
There is nothing wrong with you. You are loved and appreciated by someone. Your feelings are natural and beautiful.   
Remember that.

Mai Valentine || Submit || More Posts ‘

Kaiba felt as if he was going to cry but he had no idea why.

It felt— it felt so specific to his situation, it felt cryptic, but it felt warm and safe, for some odd reason. He clicked ‘more posts’.

The blog was filled with general updates from Valentine, with many user questions and positivity posts filling the dash as well. It was so… intriguing. It was all so new! He had to have spent about two more hours simply scrolling before he finally found himself overnight over the submit button.

He wanted to.   
Should he?   
Yes.   
He clicked submit.

The first thing it requested was a submitter name. Kaiba pondered for a while, before deciding on what he thought was a clever name— Adeena Yagami. The combination of his and Mokuba’s middle names, something so specific that he hoped no one would crack it. … Would Mokuba be ok with his brother using his name for something so… different? He hoped so because he had already chosen ‘okay’.

He began to type out his ask.

‘ Greetings Miss Valentine. I have a few inquiries on some things I’ve been quite confused on as of late. I’ve recently found myself getting carried away in my thoughts on my attraction, previously I’d be able to push it down, but now I’m nervous I’ll ruin everything if it rises too high. Suggestions to repress it better? I appreciate your time.   
Adeena Yagami ‘

Kaiba anxiously reloaded the page. He thought this shit was supposed to be instantaneous, where was his reply?

He looked at his alarm clock.   
5:25 AM.   
He started to close his computer— but first, he closed the ‘gay bad’ search tag. Maybe he didn’t need it anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like Kaiba is OOC in this oof
> 
> Also I have like 2 other fanfics in progress let’s start a third :) 
> 
> Chapter 3 of baby steps is currently being written!


End file.
